Level Sync

Level Sync is a feature used in instanced quests, instanced duties, and FATEs to keep difficulty consistent. Level Sync allow players to party together for a wider variety of content across different character levels without creating imbalances due to higher level players.

Duties

Level Sync is automatically applied when joining a duty (such as a dungeon or trial) where the character's level is higher than recommended. While the character's level is reduced, the character will temporarily lose access to any actions (weaponskills, spells, or abilities) their job would normally learn above the synced level, with the exception that Role Actions are kept available. Their HP, damage, and healing will also be reduced and the effect of gear will be scaled down. Once the duty is finished or the player leaves, the character will afterwards be restored to their normal potential. Some duties come with additional item level syncs. This is more common for dungeons than raids.

The player is able to disable Level Sync ("unsyncing") when creating a pre-made Unrestricted Party, which bypasses the usual matchmaking functions of Duty Finder. If the character's real level is much higher than that of the dungeon, avoiding Level Sync will enable them to use their full power to quickly solo clear the duty. Only instanced PvE duties accessible through Duty Finder can be unsynced, with the exception of ultimate raids and duties released in the current expansion.

Level Sync only works downwards, when the character is higher than that of the duty. Level Sync does not increase the level of characters that are too low to enter or in the middle of the recommended range. PvP has a similar system where all characters are synced to a similar level of power, but this is not generally considered Level Sync.

• The only exceptions are The Bozjan Southern Front and Zadnor, where the minimum level to enter is 71, but all characters will be scaled upwards or downwards to level 80.

Quests

Main article: Quest Battles

Many Class Quests or Job Quests have portions of instanced combat where the player participates with friendly NPCs. While these NPCs do not join the player's party like a multiplayer duty, the same rules apply with action restrictions.

There are some mechanics related to difficulty but are not Level Sync. For example, if the quest duty instance is failed, then the player can choose to scale down the difficulty when they try again to Easy or Very Easy, but this doesn't affect the level sync mechanic. Quest Sync is a different feature that instead scales up the rewards in addition to the difficulty of the quest to match either the player's current level or the level cap of the expansion the quest was released in (whichever is lower). Another unrelated feature is Leve Difficulty, which can be chosen by the player and scales up the level of mobs instead.

FATEs

In the open world it is not possible to participate in a FATE when higher than the recommended level. The player has to hit a button in the Duty Tracker to sync down. Please note that other mobs around the FATE target can still gain enmity/aggro, and attack the player while they are weaker under level sync, so it can be useful to kill them at the player's usual level first before applying level sync to make it easier.

A similar level sync feature exists within The Forbidden Land, Eureka, but the player's Elemental Level is affected instead. Each Eureka zone has its own elemental level cap that players must sync down to if their current elemental level is higher, in addition to elemental level caps for individual FATEs within the zones.

Item Level Sync

Main article: Item Level

When the player's class level is synced down, the item levels of the player's gear are capped according to the target class level. For example, at class level 50, the item level cap is 130. Some duties will have an additional item level sync, which applies a lower item level cap than usual - these lower sync caps primarily appear in duties at the current or previous class level caps (50, 60, 70, etc).

A piece of gear that is synced down will have its materia melds ignored, and its attributes are capped according to the target item level. For secondary attributes (i.e., substats such as Critical Hit and Determination), the cap is equal to the higher substat of a  high quality crafted gear, Bdungeon, Ctomestone, or Ctrial/raid gear of the same type (weapon, head/arms/feet, body/legs, or accessories) at the same item level.

For example, item level 475 accessories have 88 as the high substat, so with an item level sync of 475, any accessories with a higher item level will have both substats capped at 88. Substats will not be scaled up.

	IL 500	IL 600
Substat A (base → synced)	93 → 88	127 → 88
Substat B (base → synced)	65 → 65	89 → 88

In this example, syncing down any accessories with at least item level 600 will cap both substats.

Substat caps vary by the type of the gear. For example, the following are the substat caps for IL 475 gear:

Weapon	Head/Hands/Feet	Body/Legs	Accessories
184 ( PLD: 131 sword + 53 shield)	112	177	88

• For gear that occupies multiple slots, the cap is the sum of the caps across those slots.

Note that syncing down sufficiently high item level gear to cap substats may be very slightly worse than using a melded item matching the item level sync, but this depends on the specific gear pieces, the content, and job.

However, for the most recent ultimate raids, players are expected to use gear matching the item level sync for the encounter. This is because the loss of materia melds from syncing down higher item level gear will significantly impact damage. This is no longer an issue once gear is released of sufficiently high item level to cap both substats (around 120 item levels above the item level sync: one expansion's worth of patches).

Syncing down gear with more than two substats (e.g. Relic Weapons) works similarly in terms of the stat caps. Because of this, it is generally preferable to use a relic weapon for ultimate raids, including those released in the current expansion, as long as the weapon's item level exceeds the item level sync of the raid.